Azerbaijan, Baku, Jan.6 / Trend H. Veliyev /
From the second half of January a mass connection of the branches and offices of Azerbaijani postal service operator LLC "Azerpoct" to an automated corporate information system will start, Novruz Mammadov, the head of the Postal Communication Department of the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology said.
He said so far, 700 branches and offices of Azerpoct, 125 of which are located in Baku, have been connected to the system.
"By the end of the first quarter, depending on the technical readiness of the branch network of the operator, 1,200 offices and branches of postal service will have access to the system. In general, this year a complete coverage of automated corporate information system across the network of postal operator is expected," Mammadov said.
Today, the Central Bank of Azerbaijan (CBA) has issued permissions for provision of the financial services to more than 400 offices. Azerpoct's 37 post offices are connected to the central module of the automated corporate information system. About 30 of them already provide the financial services.
Today, the operator is allowed to provide five of the seven existing financial services. These include opening and managing accounts, money transfers, issuance of debit card transactions for buying and selling currencies on the order book and collection of cash and other valuable means. The provision of two more additional services - taking deposits and issue of credit cards will be revised in 2011.
Azerpoct's entry into the Azerbaijani banking market will seriously compete with the banking market players. Azerbaijan banking market has 47 banks, the total number of branches is more than 500, while the number of Azerpoct's post offices exceeds 1,600 units.